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hi mart,youll know this ,is gwendolyn long for wendy?

No steve56. Wendy is a name first popularised by J.M.Barrie when he used it in "Peter Pan". It wasn't a girl's name before then.

Mart

Amazed me how anybody could make a King Arthur film without Merlin in it

Its just not right but maybe he came along later who knows


cheers
B....OZ

Thanks for the info everybody

cheers
B....OZ

Sorry, if I'm too late on this but I hope I may put my tuppence worth in. A few years ago myself and a a couple of colleagues were commissioned to research the most likely residence and stamping-ground of the once and future king.

There are two Arthurs : One is a real if rather elusive historical figure and the other one is the legendary persona glorified by successive writers and poets from the 12th Century on.

Real Arthur :

A Romano-British tribal chief of the late 5th to early 6th centuries. Most likely his name was Artorius. The other gaelic names are also speculative. He succeeded Ambrosius as leader of the Britons. He was responsible for successive battles and some victories against the Engli (English=Angles) and the Saxons (Sassenachs). His most famous victory was at Badon Hill (which we thought was near Bath) in and around 495 AD. This is generally accepted as the last great victory for the Western Empire of Rome even though that city fell in 476 AD, the early Romanised Christian Church still sought to influence and colonise. Not everyone was pagan or pre-Christian in Britain before 597 AD. In modern terms he's probably from the Welsh Borders.

Please note that at this time the British were actually the Welsh (or in Old English, wealsc =foreigner). In the year after Rome formally left Britain (410 AD), there was a brutal incursion into this country by the north German people, the Saxons. So in sum, Arthur was trying to protect the ways of his people, a Romanised community keen to return to a Roman form of civilised and centralised government, fighting the invasions of the northern European barbarians. Most claims for Arthur in Scotland, the West Country or indeed Brittany are probably spurious. No mention or evidence of Guinevere or any attendant 'knights'. Gwenhwyfar was the name of at least three prominent West Britons around the 6th Centuries.

Legendary Arthur :

More interesting for most people. The real interest in the personage who was increasingly seen as a British hero really began with the 9th Century collection nominally ascribed to Nennius. Then, in the 1130s Geoffrey Of Monmouth wrote 'Historia Regum Britanniae', a superb almostcomic-fantasy loosely based around British history and legendary kings. He was the one who really kicks it off and is the first to mention Guinevere, but here calls her Gunhamura, a Roman aristocrat. The monk Wace in and around 1150 then adds to the mix with his mention of a round table in 'Roman de Brut'.

It was popular throughout Europe. So popular that it manuscripts of it were found all over the continent. Whether they were directly used by Chretien de Troyes is moot at best. We do know he wrote Yvain (Gawain) and Lancelot between 1177 and 1181. He also wrote the first part of Perceval (Parsifal) another piece that portrays much of the received Arthurian legend. This is where we first see the legend of Guinevere and the knights et al. So much of the Romantic view of Arthur stems from this and as Caractacus has said, the legends proved hugely popular and influential throughout Europe. Here the romance between Lancelot and Guinevere takes off. And the rise of the Trouveres tradition (Troubadors, Minstrels) helped spread the word. Even a generally reliable chronicler such as Froissart mentions Arthur as a great British king and his castle building expolits in Britain and France. Most Western European countries want their slice of the Arthur legend.

And then of course we have Malory's 'Morte D'Arthur'. Whether it was the 'imprisoned knight' who wrote this is open even now to some scholarly debate. Certainly if it was him the Caxton link is wrong. But whoever wrote this was writing an elegy for the notion of chivalry and the death of courtly love. It was in turn very influential in Europe not least with Cervantes and his epic.

I think the legend is a classic case of layer upon layer being put on to a fanciful but attractive series of stories. And the crux is what Caractacus has stated : Each generation puts its own interpretation on legends that we may use for our own ends and needs.

The quest for the real Arthur lies as much with the roots of the English Language as it does with finding historical evidence which probably ain't there. If anyone has stuck with this to here, I would recommend John Morris' wonderful book 'The Age of Arthur' as the best historical introduction to the period 4th-7th Centuries in Britain. For the legends, you can do no better than Richard Barber's 'The Legends of Arthur'. But his is a historical-realistic, not a romantic point of view. Most of the rest of so-called Arthurian legend writing is pure junk. Go to the medieval sources if you want good literature. Sorry to be so long-winded. Hope some of this has been of use.

Excalibur's a nice film though.

.......and the historical battle of Camlann was conflated by some with Camelot.
We have the Victorians' love of romance to blame mainly for Arthur's renascence (what? Didn't they have enough national heroes like Nelson and Wellington?), and of course Gwen was a Godsend for the Pre-Raphaelites.
There are also some striking parallels with Arthurian legend in the Celtic stories contained in the Mabinogion.
For a fond debunking of the legends you can't beat White's 'The Once and Future King'.

Fascinating: but, naaahhh.....I was just having a sherry with him down the Dog and Apothecary last Tuesay night.
Rex quondam, Rexque futurus..................

Never too late

I guessed most of it was romantic nonsense
otherwise Monty Python wouldn't have taken the piss out of the legend
in the holy grail

cheers
B....OZ

I know what you mean. Of course for me the great attraction lay in historical research (and some foreign travel). The real Arthur graces a fascinating and still largely unknown period of our history. By a strange coincidence, the period of Artorius (from c.470-520) is the least recorded or known for some time. Early chroniclers such as Gildas got their dates horribly wrong and successive historians (including my beloved Bede) carried forward the errors.

But as long as you know that it is fantastical, it can still be very enjoyable on its own terms. And as I said, the stoies have become highly influential in literature as well as popular culture. They may still be enjoyed in their own right. It's an interesting point but do you think stuff like 'Lord of the Rings' and others would have existed without the Victorian and Edwardian tendency to 'Return to Camelot'. What do you think, DB ?

I suppose Arthur was a precursor of the "Sword and Sorcery" heroes and before him were the Greek myths etc.

Mart